Press releases

Project Equity, a national leader in advancing employee ownership, is proud to announce the release of the employee ownership policy database, the first publicly accessible, comprehensive catalog of local, state, and federal employee ownership (EO) policies across the United States. The database brings together a wide range of legislation, executive orders, funding initiatives, and programmatic efforts designed to support broad-based EO.

This new resource documents over 300 EO policies spanning 140 years, offering unprecedented insight into how policymakers and public agencies have advanced Employee Stock Ownership Plans (ESOPs), worker cooperatives, and Employee Ownership Trusts (EOTs).

“We created this tool to fill a critical gap,” said Max Chaoulideer, Senior Manager, Ecosystem Development & Policy at Project Equity. “Until now, no single resource offered a full view of employee ownership policy across all broad-based models and levels of government. This database makes that possible—for advocates, researchers, and policymakers alike.”

“The Employee Ownership Policy Database is an invaluable tool for legislators, advocates, and scholars on a policy idea that has broad appeal across the political spectrum,” said Corey Rosen, founder of the National Center for Employee Ownership (NCEO).

“Employee ownership is particularly compelling because of how bipartisan it is,” said Mark Hand, professor of Political Science at UT-Arlington and editor of The Stakehold. “Though EO offers legislators the rare policy tool that benefits workers, businesses, and local economies, there is still so much to be done to support EO from a policy perspective. This tool will help advance EO legislation across the country.”

“A supportive policy environment is key to ensuring more businesses and workers have access to employee ownership,” said Steve Storkan, Executive Director of the Employee Ownership Expansion Network (EOX). “As elected officials show an increasing appetite for EO, we must ensure that they have the necessary resources to develop effective and ambitious legislation. This database will build on growing momentum in the EO field and serve as a valuable tool for anyone interested in expanding broad-based EO.”

A tool for action and insight

The database includes policies that have been passed, proposed, or repealed and is organized using Project Equity’s EO policy framework, which spans six key categories:

• Enabling environment
• Awareness raising
• Affordable technical assistance
• Accessible capital
• Incentives for employee-owned businesses
• Economic development programs

Users can toggle between local, state, and federal data using an interactive visualization, filter by geography, year, and policy category, and click directly into detailed policy summaries and source links.

Key takeaways from the database include:

• Federal policy has focused largely on ESOPs, while local policy has been focused almost entirely on worker cooperatives. State-level EO legislation has covered all forms of broad-based EO, with an increasing number of bills in recent years offering support for all forms of EO.
• California has the highest concentration of cities and counties with local EO efforts, representing over half of all local EO policies. In terms of their financial commitment to EO policies, however, California localities have collectively invested a little over $1 million, while New York City, Chicago, Madison, Seattle, and Saint Paul have, cumulatively, invested over $50 million.
• Colorado is now a clear state-level leader both in quantity and ambition of enacted EO legislation; since 2017, the state has passed 8 bills, each of which has strategically built on and complemented previous legislation.
• Though momentum around EO is concentrated regionally, there is no clear correlation between local and state EO policy activity.

Built for collaboration

Project Equity developed this resource as part of a larger collaborative research project with Morehouse College and the University of California, Riverside. This research, funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Urban Institute, and the WorkRise Network, was also informed by resources from a wide range of leading EO organizations, including:

• NCEO
• Democracy at Work Institute (DAWI)
• UW Center for Cooperatives
• Center for Community-Based Enterprise
• U.S. Federation of Worker Cooperatives
• The Democracy Collaborative

“We developed this database to deepen our own understanding of the policy landscape around EO and opportunities to shape more inclusive, equitable policymaking,” said Tyler Rivera, Manager of Policy & Impact at Project Equity, and team lead for Project Equity’s collaborative research with Morehouse and UC Riverside. “We hope that practitioners, advocates, researchers, and policymakers will dig into the data, uncover insights from what’s been tried, and use those learnings as a shared foundation to build from.”

The EO policy database is now live at: https://project-equity.org/impact/public-policy/employee-ownership-policy-database